7 h 3 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 7 h 3 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What connects a calculating machine, a gambler’s dice, and a searching mind drawn to Christian faith?
In Pascal, John Tulloch follows Blaise Pascal from a gifted childhood in provincial France into science, religious dispute, and philosophy. The boy works out geometry on his own. The young inventor builds a calculating machine. As Pascal investigates the vacuum and considers problems of chance, questions of mathematics sit alongside the demands of family and faith.
Tulloch, a Scottish minister and church historian, gives Pascal’s religious life as much attention as his science. You meet the writer who challenges the Jesuits in the Provincial Letters and the thinker behind the unfinished Pensées. A quarrel within French Catholicism shapes the story, bringing Pascal’s convictions into conflict with the religious authorities around him.
What you’ll discover
- A boy discovering geometry Meet the child who works out geometry for himself before his wider scientific life begins.
- Science with practical roots Follow Pascal’s calculating machine alongside the long columns of sums in his father’s tax work.
- Dice and difficult questions See how the Chevalier de Méré’s questions about gambling lead Pascal toward problems of chance.
- Faith amid fierce dispute Explore the Catholic quarrel surrounding Port-Royal and Pascal’s challenge to the Jesuits in the Provincial Letters.
- The mind behind the Pensées Approach the unfinished notes through a life that holds mathematics and Christian thought together.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who enjoy the lives of scientists, the quarrels of seventeenth-century France, and the way faith and reason meet in one mind.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Curiosity finds its own proofs
- Family gifts answer a crisis
- Religious zeal needs sound judgment
- A mountain puts belief to test
- Society sharpens his human insight
- A spiritual experience redirects his search
- Public wit opens a theological quarrel
- Irony tests the claims of morality
- Human greatness stands beside human misery
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Pascal
by John Tulloch · 1878
A twelve-year-old with charcoal rebuilds Euclid alone, and a night of fire later changes his life.
Challenging2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“Dr. Nares speaks in several places with just severity of the sophistry of the Jesuits, and with just admiration of the incomparable letters of Pascal.”
In short
Imagine a boy of twelve, alone in a playroom, holding a piece of charcoal. He invents his own names for circles and triangles, then his own proofs, and reaches the thirty-second proposition of Euclid's first book.
Pascal at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 5 min3 h 15 min fast, 4 h 50 min slow
- Length
- 57,900 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1878by John Tulloch
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A boy invents geometry on the floor
Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623. After his mother died, his father Étienne moved to Paris in 1630 to teach his children himself. His rule, recorded by Pascal's sister Gilberte, was to keep the boy ahead of his work. So Latin waited until the age of twelve.
The boy wanted the reason for everything. When his father hid the mathematics books, he only grew more curious. He was told that mathematics was the art of drawing exact figures and finding their proportions. Then he went to his playroom with charcoal, drew circles and triangles on the floor, and made up names, definitions and proofs. He reached the thirty-second proposition of Euclid's first book. His father found him lost in thought and ran with tears of joy to tell a friend.
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Details
- First published
- 1878
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 30 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Tulloch, John. Pascal. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/pascal.
Tulloch, J. (2026). Pascal. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/pascal (Original work published 1878)
Tulloch, John. Pascal. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/pascal.
@book{tulloch2026pascal,
author = {Tulloch, John},
title = {Pascal},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/pascal},
note = {First published 1878}
}
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What is Pascal by John Tulloch about?
It is an intellectual biography of Blaise Pascal. It follows his childhood genius, his experiments on air pressure, his years in Paris society, his conversion and life at Port Royal, and the two writings that made him lasting: the Provincial Letters and the Pensées.
Why did Pascal write the Provincial Letters?
Antoine Arnauld, a friend of Port Royal, was facing condemnation by the Sorbonne in 1656 over questions of grace. His friends asked Pascal to explain the dispute to ordinary readers. His witty Letters, and then his attack on Jesuit moral teaching, followed.
What are the Pensées?
They are Pascal's notes for a planned defense of Christianity, left unfinished at his death in 1662. Tulloch explains how early editors altered them, how a true text was recovered in the 1840s, and why any fixed order belongs to the editor.
The author
John Tulloch
1823–1886 · Scottish theologian
John Tulloch (1823–1886) was a Scottish theologian and Church of Scotland minister. He became principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews, in 1854 and held that post until his death. He wrote Leaders of the Reformation (1859) and Pascal (1878). He died in Torquay, England.
“Do you want people to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.”
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